The Tribes Meet

As usual we started the day with a lovely breakfast by the pool...

Then drove to the country side to meet various hill tribes.  This is a convenience store in the country side.

Most of the houses are built out of bamboo which takes about two weeks and has to be rebuilt each year.  The biggest benefit is the house is free because the bamboo comes from the forest and the neighbors all help each other to build the house.  A cement house costs $10,000 and takes 1 year to build.

Government provides free water and taxes 1.5% of rice sold.

Black smith of the Tai Lu people that were given to Laos by the Chinese king a hundred years ago.

Oink...

Tai Lu people are known for blue die which is made by fermenting plants...

The women do a lot of weaving...

Lots of turkeys.  The animals all just roam around including pigs, chickens, turkeys, cows and ducks.

They grow cotton.  This woman showed us how they process the cotton.  The inside of her house isn't bad.  The Laos people are very clean--almost no trash on the road and they are known to shower twice a day.

Fifty years ago it was common for Tai Lu men to get tattoos from their knees to their navel.  They insisted I take this picture as they are proud of their tattoos.  I like his t-shirt.

They are big into cock fighting, apparently this one won.  They do not fight to the death like Thailand though.

Making a basket.

We had lunch in on of the houses.

Our guide.

Our host and his daughter.

I nervously took the first bite.  It was good and didn't make us sick.  The chilli sauce was the spiciest thing I ever tasted.

Lots of kids on their walk home.

Then we toured the tribe of the Hmong which used to produce opium but are now paid not to.

Also not bad digs.  Incredibly nice people.  I felt like we were invading but they seemed to have fun.

Then for a delicious meal at the hotel.

Farewell Siem Reap, Cambodia; Hello Luang Prabang, Laos

We got up early to see the last few temples on our list before leaving Siem Reap.  We hired a tuk tuk to take us all around.  It was a great way to end the trip because it was cool out and the tuk tuk ride took us past all the temples we had already been to.

And we saw some elephants on the ride too...

Our first stop was a small temple that you couldn't enter called Preah Neak Poan with pools of water signifying the four elements.

Our second stop was Preah Khan which was one of the largest and may have been a university.  It had some architecture that looked Greek.  Most notably to us was that the statues all had their heads cleanly cut off.  I read online that people including some Cambodian military who used chainsaws had stolen artifacts from the temples recently to sell.

Then we went to the death gate, one of the four gates around Angkor Thom that was supposed to have buried individuals, but we couldn't find where after a long walk through the woods.  We did find another gate though.

Then we went to Phnom Ba Kheng which is high up on a mountain.

Then back to the town center.

There gas stations are one liter bottles filled with gasoline.  Most often we saw Johnny Walker bottles.

We found a store selling knock-offs of every piece of software including obscure expensive tools like Matlab.

Then lunch at Khmer Family Restaurant...

 

Then we flew to Luang Prabang, Laos and were greeted at another amazing hotel with macarons.

Then dinner at Blue Lagoon...